


Kingdom Come: The Resurrected Boy

by agenderalien (rainbowballz)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cedric Diggory Lives, Eventual Smut, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-06-01 16:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6526858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowballz/pseuds/agenderalien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cedric felt very ill with the realization that his life would now be divided into two parts: before he died and after he died. The space between them was a canyon. // Abandoned for the foreseeable future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fueled by my selfish desire to bring my favorite Hufflepuff back to life, I decided to finally bring this fic, which has been living in my head for ages, into the light. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

 

The first Cedric heard of it was his third evening at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, fourth floor. The nurses, dressed in white with the wand and bone crest on their shirt pockets, were taking on the formidable task of convincing Cedric’s father to go home. 

 

And for the third night in a row they were met with absolute refusal. 

 

“He’ll be lucky if I ever let him out of my sight again,” his father told the polite but irritated staff for the upteenth time, and then smiled at Cedric, taking one of his son’s hands in both of his own. He had tears in his eyes, and Cedric had always known his father to be the smiling, laughing type, exuding warmth and kindness like an aura, not one to cry just by looking at him in a certain way. But crying seemed to be all Amos Diggory had done the past three days. Sob and worry and hold onto Cedric at every opportunity, and not sleep a wink. Even Cedric’s mother’s attempts to bring him home had been unsuccessful and she had gone hours ago, too tired to argue. 

 

“You’re exhausted,” Cedric said, his own voice weary and soft. Despite having done little but lie in bed under the close observation of doctors, he still felt just as weak as when he had arrived at St. Mungo’s. And he could see it in his father’s heavy, purple bagged eyes that it was hurting him even more than Cedric. “Pretty soon they’ll have to get you a room of your own if you don’t start taking care of yourself.”

 

Amos chuckled at that, leaned over and kissed Cedric on the forehead like he did when Cedric was a little boy. “Just like you to be worried about someone else after everything you’ve been through.” He wept even as he smiled, and Cedric lifted a hand to brush those tears away. His father held Cedric’s open palm to his cheek and closed his eyes. 

 

“We almost lost you,” his father said, and Cedric shook his head. He didn’t want to hear this again. But Amos continued, his voice shaking. “I almost lost you to - to  _ You-Know-Who _ -”

 

“Dad.” Cedric wrapped his arms around his father’s neck which only made him cry harder, shoulders shaking in Cedric’s grasp. “Go home. It’s just for the night. You and Mum can come back right away in the morning.” Cedric pulled away to find his father’s wet eyes again. “I’m okay, Dad. I’m alive.”

 

Lower lip trembling, Amos gathered his son’s face in both hands and studied him closely, like if he didn’t he would forget what he looked like. “But you did die, son.” Amos’ hands began to tremble. “I saw you - your body. It was  _ empty _ . You weren’t in it, Cedric. You were gone. You were  _ dead _ .” He inhaled sharply and closed his eyes, the memory so horrific that he could not contain his sobs. 

 

Cedric’s mouth was too dry to swallow. He peeled his father’s hands from his face and held them together tightly. “Dad …”

 

“You know what they’re calling you in the Daily Prophet?” Amos shook his head, eyes still closed, and he pulled his hands away just to fish in his pocket for a handkerchief. He blew his nose loudly and then looked at the nurses still lingering awkwardly in the room. “They know. They’ve read all about it, in fact. Saw them this morning, over their tea.”

 

Cedric’s brows came together. He’d been in and out of consciousness for three days, unable to find the strength to keep himself awake for longer than a few hours at a time. Between his parents and the doctors fussing over him he’d had little time to do much else. “What? What are they saying?”

 

The silence that followed was as uncomfortable as it was long. The St. Mungo’s staff glanced nervously at each other. It seemed that Mr. Diggory was waiting for one of them to explain, unable to do so himself, but when none of them offered, Cedric asked again.

 

“What are they saying about me?” He met eyes with the youngest of the nurses, a redheaded girl maybe a handful of years older than Cedric himself, and pleaded. “Is it bad?”

 

The young woman frowned. Her badge read Flora. She looked at her fellow nurses, then Cedric’s father, then Cedric again. Flora opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out, so she cleared it and tried again. “They’re calling you the … the boy who came back from the dead.” She paused a moment, and took a deep breath. “The Resurrected Boy.”

 

Amos readjusted his glasses with a sniffle. “You’re the next Harry Potter, s’far as everyone’s concerned.”

 

The name felt like a punch to Cedric’s chest. His eyes clenched closed and he saw Harry Potter’s face contorted with fear, screams echoing across Cedric’s memories until they reached into the present, as if Harry were standing right next to him, as if he had never stopped screaming. 

 

Cedric flinched. It rippled from his face all the way to his feet, a spasm that made him groan in pain. That caught the nurses’ attention. They rushed to his side, the redheaded nurse putting a cool hand to his forehead while another took Amos gently by the arm and steered him toward the door. 

 

“Your son needs his rest, Mr. Diggory,” the man told him, gentle but firm. “And I must insist you give him some peace and quiet so he can get it.”

 

Amos tried to refuse, again, and looked back at his son. 

 

Watching Cedric struggle was almost unbearable for Amos and Cedric knew this. He tried to recover from his momentary lapse as quickly as possible to offer his father a ghost of a reassuring smile. “I’m okay, Dad. Really. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

His father did not seem convinced. The male nurse took another step with him still in tow toward the door and Amos shot him an angered look, even more uncharacteristic than his frequent crying of late, and Cedric thought for a moment that his father might raise his voice, something Cedric had rarely seen him do. He hoped that this, all of it, any of it, would not change his father into someone he didn’t know. 

 

But Amos caught himself, relaxed in the nurse’s hold, and finally relented. He allowed himself to be guided to the door and at the threshold he stopped to look back at Cedric one more time.

 

“I love you, son,” he said, eyes still damp.

 

Cedric relaxed against the pillow. “Love you, too.”

 

When he was finally gone, Cedric listened to the nurses whispering over him until they were satisfied with his signs, and then they trickled out, one by one, until Flora was the only one who remained, mixing a potion at Cedric’s bedside. 

 

“Is it true, then?” Cedric asked her as she passed the cup to him. He leaned up on his elbow. “I’m the Resurrected Boy?”

 

Flora gave a short nod. “You were on the front page of the Prophet. Drink that, now. It’ll help you sleep.”

 

He stared into the cup, a milky white liquid that smelled of ginger, and frowned. “Couldn’t’ve been Resurrected Man? I’m nearly eighteen.”

 

With a snort, Flora laughed, which Cedric thought adorable. “Back from the dead and that’s what you’re worried about?”

 

Cedric smiled. He threw back his head and downed the potion in one swallow, a tingling sensation chasing all the way to his stomach. 

 

The Resurrected Boy, brought back by the Boy Who Lived. Cedric shook his head to himself and placed the cup carefully on the table. Flora touched his shoulder and gave him a small, tentative smile.

 

When Flora turned out the lights and left, Cedric stared into the dark and realized that this was the first time he had been alone since it happened. He suddenly wished he had not convinced his father to leave, that he was still there at the side of the bed, one hand on his hair, just like he had done when Cedric was a little boy.  

 

There was a hollowness in him that he could not explain. He took a deep breath like that would fill it, but when he let it out in one long rush there was nothing still. The emptiness frightened him; he knew something was missing, something was gone, taken, but he didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know what would grow in its place. 

 

The potion pulled him under before fear could and he dreamed the same dream he had the two nights before. 

 

It began with Harry Potter screaming. 

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning Minister Fudge was eating breakfast with Cedric in his room, which is something Cedric couldn’t have conjured in his wildest fantasies: him and the Minister of Magic, eating biscuits and sausage together at a small round table by the window in his hospital room at St. Mungo’s, on what would have been an otherwise uneventful Wednesday. 

 

Cedric still didn’t have the strength to stand so when not in bed he was in a wheelchair, and it was from this that he watched Minister Fudge dab at his mouth with a hospital napkin, and really, Cedric thought he had seen strange things in Divination class. 

 

Of all of the things that he had expected to happen today, this wasn’t even on the list. That seemed to describe his life very accurately lately. 

 

Truthfully, when his father told him he had a visitor, Cedric suspected Cho. His second guess would have been Harry, but before he had a chance to ask his father told him it was the Minister of Magic himself and then Cedric’s stomach tucked itself into a monster of a knot. He found he couldn’t eat his breakfast despite feeling very hungry and very weak, waiting for the inevitable question and dreading having to answer it.

 

Thus far the Minister had said little of consequence. He went on about how kind the staff were, asked if Cedric was being treated all right, how were his parents getting on, that kind of thing.

 

“Do you have any siblings at Hogwarts?” Fudge had smiled at him, all lips. “We always need students who excel like you.”

 

Cedric didn’t normally consider himself a very sarcastic person, his mother always taught him that was quite rude, but he did have to restrain himself from looking quite obviously around the hospital room. He sure did excel, didn’t he, winding up here.

 

But Cedric just flexed a polite smile and shook his head. “I had a sister, but she died when she was a baby.” Before Fudge could utter an apology, Cedric lifted a hand and shook his head again. A well rehearsed motion. “It was a very long time ago, I was only five.”

 

“Well,” Fudge resigned. “If she had been anything like you, then she would have been a magnificent witch.”

 

Cedric thanked him. Their food came then, and Cedric was spared any more sad glances. Fudge busied himself with their meal, making comments, “I’ll have to remember to say something to the chef on the way out, this is marvelous,” and all Cedric could do was smile and nod because what else does someone say to the Minister of Magic in a time like this?

 

Cedric knew why he was there, anyway, and he wished Fudge would just ask and get it over with so Cedric could go back to bed. He’d been awake for less than an hour and he already felt fatigued. His head hurt and he wanted another one of the potions Flora had given him yesterday, the one that tasted sort of sour but made his headache vanish in minutes. He didn’t want to talk to Fudge. He didn’t want to talk about it at all.

 

“Sir?”

 

The Minister looked up at him, and Cedric realized a moment too late that he had interrupted him mid-sentence. Cedric flushed.

 

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t mean to be rude. I know you came all this way to see me but I’m very tired. Is there something I can do for you?” Cedric squinted against the morning sun through the window and held his hands tightly in his lap. 

 

Fudge sat back. “Oh, it’s quite all right, my boy. I can go on a bit of a ramble sometimes.” He folded his napkin and sighed, looking at everywhere but Cedric. They were alone, his mother and father down in the lounge, the staff no doubt listening in from outside the door, and Fudge’s people surely trying to prevent them from doing so. Cedric had caught a glimpse earlier of what must be Fudge’s bodyguard; the man was so massive that seeing him stand beside quaint little Fudge was comical.

 

When the Minister finally did look back at Cedric, it was with a well creased frown. “Have you had any contact with Harry Potter?”

 

The question was not the one Cedric had been preparing for and it threw him off. For a moment his rising dread was trumped by confusion. He frowned and shook his head. “No. Why?”

 

“You haven’t sent any letters to anyone?” Fudge dismissed Cedric’s question and folded his hands on the table, eyebrows raised like he was waiting for -  _ expecting  _ Cedric to lie.

 

“No,” Cedric said again, this time more firmly.

 

“But you have received letters, isn’t that correct?”

 

Cedric’s brows came together, not following. “Yes. From my friends.”

 

“And none of them were from Harry Potter?”

 

“No.” Cedric paused. “I don’t think so. I haven’t looked at them all yet. There are a lot.” 

 

Fudge smiled, like Cedric had just revealed something criminal. “I see. Cedric, I know this is not a very comfortable topic for you, but it’s important that I know what happened the night of the final task. What you saw.”

 

The morning light burned Cedric’s eyes when he turned away from Fudge, toward the window. He didn’t look away even though it hurt, willed the sun to turn everything he saw to ash in his mind so he wouldn’t have to remember it anymore. 

 

Resurrection had not been kind enough to grant him amnesia. He wished it had. He couldn’t keep himself awake for very long and every time he slept it was another chance to watch it all unfold again, every terrible moment. He’d seen it enough.

 

“Harry Potter claims …” Fudge shook his head in apparent disbelief. “He claims that You-Know-Who has returned.”

 

Cedric’s pulse jumped. “You don’t believe him.” It wasn’t a question.

 

The Minister sighed for so long Cedric was sure he would deflate right in his chair. “I am trying to get the story straight.”

 

“Why would Harry lie?” Cedric cocked his head. “What would he possibly have to gain from lying about something like this?”

 

Cedric never imagined he would find himself under any circumstances in which he would argue with the Minister of Magic. He also never thought the Minister of Magic would ever look at him with such intense irritation, almost rage, or that he was even capable of it. He seemed so harmless in the papers, almost dim. During the Tournament his contact with the Minister had been limited to pictures, mostly, and Cedric had considered him a bit pompous but well meaning.

 

The expression Cedric saw was one he had never seen in the Daily Prophet, and certainly not one had he witnessed during their brief meetings for the press during the Tournament. It came and went in an instant but Cedric read it in that short time, and it was livid.

 

Fudge might be a portly old man now but he hadn’t always, and Cedric caught a glimpse of the young wizard he must have been.

 

“Mr. Diggory,” Fudge began, straightening in his chair. The redness that had started to build in his cheeks gave way to white as he willed himself to relax. “I am here to find out the truth. If I believed fully that Mr. Potter was lying, then why would I be here at all?”

 

That gave Cedric a moment of pause. He folded his hands in his lap.

 

Several seconds of tense silence lapsed before Fudge spoke again and when he did it was with a significantly calmer tone. “I know that whatever happened to you, Cedric, was … unpleasant. Traumatic. But I need you to tell me everything you can.”

 

“I will,” Cedric said, drawing circles on his kneecap. “If you promise to answer a question of mine when I’m done.”

 

Fudge hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He brought his tea to his lips, now surely cold, though if it bothered him at all he didn’t show it.

 

Cedric settled in the wheelchair and looked out the window again. He began with the start of the last task of the Tournament, standing outside the maze with Dumbledore and Harry and the others. He told him about the Skrewt, Viktor’s bewitched attack, defeating the Acromantula with Harry, and taking the cup with him.

 

“We argued for a bit about who should take it. I said he should, he said I should…” Cedric smiled to himself, shook his head and looked back into his lap at his open hands. “He’s very polite.”

 

Fudge made some sort of noise that Cedric couldn’t decipher, so he ignored it.

 

“We decided to take it together. We grabbed it at the same time and … and I think I knew before Harry did, what it was: a portkey. It happened so fast. For a minute I thought that was what was supposed to happen, that it was just transporting us out of the maze. I wasn’t afraid.” Cedric ran a hand through his hair, down the back of his neck, and settled his first two fingers under his jaw, on his jugular. “And then I was.”

 

“Where did you go?” Fudge prompted. “Where did the portkey take you?”

 

Cedric frowned, shaking his head. “I remember being confused. Why would it take us to a … a graveyard? I thought it would bring us back to the front of the maze where the crowd was, where everyone was waiting for us… but there were headstones, and it was cold…” 

 

Under his fingers his pulse climbed. He put his hand back in his lap and held it with the other.

 

“Harry said, he said we had to get back to the cup. I didn’t understand. He sounded afraid. I looked around for the cup, and then I heard …” Cedric’s head yanked backward suddenly and he frantically searched above him, where the voice had come from. “This terrible, terrible voice, this awful voice, and it said, he said …” Cedric swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “He said,  _ kill the spare _ .”

 

A shudder crawled the length of Cedric’s spine. He felt nauseous, cold, even though the sun filled the window next to him, it was as if he had never known light in his life, like everything had only ever been dark. 

 

“And then another -” Cedric’s head jerked down again and he stared over Fudge’s shoulder. Fudge looked uneasy, poised to run for the door, but Cedric didn’t notice. Behind Fudge Cedric saw headstones and fog and old, dying grass. Goosebumps raced down his arms. “He said - he cast the spell that killed me.”

 

Cedric was breathing heavily, ragged, but there was no air in his lungs, they weren’t working, weren’t responding. He flattened a hand over his sternum.

 

“Should I fetch a nurse -?”

 

“No,” Cedric said, eyes squeezed shut as he hyperventilated over the table. “No, I’m fine. I just.” He swallowed in air like he was drowning. “There was a great green light, and then there was nothing.” Cedric sat back, peeled his eyes open and searched the ceiling again. He shivered, curled his toes in his slippers, and forced himself to breathe as regularly as he could. In through his mouth, out through his nose. 

 

Minister Fudge didn’t speak for a long time, waiting for Cedric to calm down, to not look like he was about to unleash something wild and dangerous. Finally, the Minister closed his hands on the table. “Did you ever actually see him?”

 

Cedric swiveled his head to meet Fudge’s stare again. “Which one?”

 

“You-Know-Who.” Fudge watched him very closely. “Did you  _ see _ him?”

 

The wheelchair creaked as he tried to find a comfortable position. There was none. He grabbed the armrests and closed his eyes again, tried to see through the brilliant green light that had consumed him in those last few seconds. Their voices were branded in his memory but they had no faces.

 

He shook his head. “No.” He opened his eyes, searched the window again. “No, I didn’t see him. But he was there. I heard him.”

 

Fudge smiled as if he had just solved something very puzzling. He leaned back and looked out the window as well, his expression almost serene.

 

“Sir,” Cedric pressed. “He  _ was  _ there. Harry is telling the truth. Voldemort is back.”

 

It was instantaneous, as it always was, hearing the name - Fudge recoiled as if he’d been struck, and he averted his gaze. Cedric realized after a moment that this was the first time he’d ever said the name out loud, himself. Even as a child, playing with friends and daring each other to do dangerous and stupid things, none of them would have thought to taunt someone into saying that name. Cedric leaned away from the table and settled into the wheelchair with a frown. 

 

He didn’t feel any different. He supposed he thought he would.

 

“Mr. Diggory,” Fudge said, coming to a hurried stand. “Thank you for your time, I believe you need your rest, and I have what I need.” He stepped around the table and raised a hand. It hovered in mid air for a moment and Cedric could tell he was trying to decide if he really wanted to risk touching Cedric, like he was afraid to, and Cedric frowned, didn’t understand why. Ultimately Fudge did reach out and put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Get well soon, my boy.”

 

Cedric straightened. “You promised you’d answer a question of my own, sir.”

 

Fudge glanced toward the door. “I suppose I did.”

 

“Is Harry alright?” 

 

Fudge looked about as prepared for that question as Cedric had at first. “He’s fine,” Fudge said, so quickly it was one word.

 

“Fine.” Cedric felt very small in the chair, dwarfed by Fudge while he stood. “Do they know … does anyone know what happened, exactly?” He shifted. “What Harry did?”

 

The Minister frowned. It seemed a permanent fixture of his face these days. “No. But he is being investigated by the Ministry.”

 

“ _ Investigated _ ?” Cedric’s heart raced. “For what?”

 

Fudge backpedaled.“My boy -”

 

“Please. Harry is my - my friend. He -” Cedric motioned to himself. “He saved my life. He can’t get in trouble for doing that, can he?”

 

“No. But it is still a matter that the Ministry must look into. This is … sensitive magic that enabled Harry to …” Fudge didn’t finish his sentence. “In the wrong hands, it could prove to be very dangerous.”

 

Cedric didn’t follow. “What kind of magic?” 

 

Again, the Minister glanced at the door. Cedric had seen him uncomfortable in pictures before but never quite like this, like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

 

Fudge looked back at him. “Necromancy,” he said, matter-of-fact, and held his hands behind his back. 

 

Maybe it was stupid of him to have not thought of that before, but Cedric felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. His face crumpled and he shook his head. “But that, that’s - that’s Dark Magic,” he blurted incredulously.

 

“Precisely.” Fudge raised his eyebrows. “But this is … not traditional necromancy, not as we have known it. You, Mr. Diggory, are not just an animated corpse. You are  _ alive _ . And that,” Fudge said, looking out the window again. “Is even more dangerous magic, if it were to fall into the wrong hands.” He sighed, then reached out again and put a careful hand on Cedric’s shoulder. “Harry Potter is not in trouble. The incident is simply being investigated for the safety of the Wizarding world. Now, I really must be going. You need your rest and I have a very busy schedule.” 

 

Cedric, still frowning, shook the Minister’s hand, and then he departed in a hurry, leaving the distinct smell of mothballs behind him. Cedric sank into the wheelchair.

 

By the time his parents returned, he was asleep. Harry was still screaming. 

 

* * *

 

 

He saw it two days later. Cedric could walk then, with aide, and he had made it all the way to the lounge at the end of the hall, where he sat in rocking chair with a quilt over his lap like a decrepit old man. If Cedric had any energy left to be embarrassed, he probably would be. As it was, he was just glad to be out of his room.

 

The fourth level of St. Mungo’s was specifically for patients harmed by spells and jinxes. Across the hall from the lounge was the entrance to the Janus Thickey Ward. It was locked. When he asked why, Flora told him it was for long term and permanent patients, ones who couldn’t return home. 

 

“Wait,” Cedric had asked as Flora guided him into the patients’ lounge. His steps were slow, every movement a terrible ache, though he worked hard to keep it off his face. “Is that where Gilderoy Lockhart lives now?”

 

The nurse quirked a smile. “That’s confidential.”

 

“I’ve heard he’s insufferable,” Cedric had said when Flora deposited him into the chair.

 

She’d shrugged the statement off. “Everyone becomes a different person when they come here.”

 

Cedric thought about that for a long time after Flora left to get him something to keep busy. He certainly felt different here, like someone else. Or, rather, that a part of himself was missing, and that without it he wasn’t whole, and if he wasn’t whole, was he the same person?

 

There were a few other patients in the lounge with him, most visiting with family members. It didn’t take long for him to realize that they were watching him and their attempts to be discreet - hiding behind papers, leaning close to one another and whispering out of the corners of their mouths - were anything but subtle. Some just point blank stared.

 

Cedric pulled absently at a loose thread in the quilt. Was this what it felt like to be Harry Potter all the time?

 

When Flora reappeared it was with a smile and Cedric relaxed, eager for the distraction. She carried in her arms a newspaper and several magazines.

 

“I could grab some puzzles for you too, if you want,” she said, placing the stack into Cedric’s lap.

 

“This is great, thank you.”

 

“Anything else for you, dear?”

 

“Could I get a glass of water?”

 

Flora smiled. “Of course.” She started to leave, then turned on her heel to face him again. “You’ve received more letters. Did you want to read them yet?”

 

He hesitated, idly folding the front cover corner of the magazine in his lap. 

 

“No pressure,” she assured, smiling. “You can open them whenever you want.”

 

“Tomorrow, maybe.” Cedric said, and Flora nodded and walked away.

 

He flipped through the first magazine with disinterest, was much more intrigued by the Quibbler underneath it, and he shuffled through the rest until he came to the Daily Prophet. 

 

Cedric read the headline and nearly dropped it.

 

**THE BOY WHO LIES?**

 

Snatching it, Cedric stared into Harry Potter’s frightened, slow blinking eyes, heart rushing in his ears. The article accompanying the headline was horrendous, nothing but dragging Harry and Dumbledore both through the mud and back again. Harry was labeled “unstable, dangerous, and hungry for attention” while Dumbledore was “senile”. 

 

“ _ We have had thirteen years of peace and we will continue to have many more _ ,” Prime Minister Fudge was quoted as saying. “ _ There is no reason to believe that You-Know-Who has returned _ .”

 

Cedric’s blood boiled. His rage lifted him from the rocking chair, dumped the other magazines and the quilt from his lap onto the floor. 

 

_ “The attack at the Triwizard Tournament was committed by a madman, nothing more. We should be grateful that there was no loss of innocent life as a result.” _

 

Beside this, to Cedric’s surprise, was a picture of himself. He was smiling, mid laugh, glancing sideways and then forward again - Cedric remembered this moment. It was just after the first task with the dragons. He had looked at Cho and then the camera. 

 

He ran his thumb over the image of his own smiling face and felt very much detached from his own body at that moment. The person in the photograph couldn’t possibly be the same person he was now.

 

In a daze, he continued reading the text beside his photograph. 

 

_ There is yet to be an explanation for the mysterious resurrection of Cedric Diggory, seventh year Hufflepuff and Triwizard Victor - _

 

Cedric paused. He won?

 

_ -who, according to witnesses, emerged from the final task void of life.  _

 

_ Experts suspect that Harry Potter used a form of Dark Magic to bring Diggory back from the grave, leaving us to question what other ominous powers Potter possesses.  _

 

_ One witness described the event as “Eerie … a blinding white light and a terrible bang.” _

 

_ Diggory currently resides at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries while he recovers. _

 

_ What of The Resurrected Boy’s testimony? Prime Minister Fudge had this to say on the matter: “I have spoken to Mr. Diggory. His story does not corroborate with that of Mr. Potter’s. The trauma of this incident has left him extremely unwell, and at this time he is not be able to distinguish reality from fantasy.” _

 

_ St. Mungo’s staff have declined comment on Diggory’s condition.  _

 

“Cedric?”

 

Cedric flinched. Flora had one hand on his arm, the other holding a glass of water. He stared at her blankly. Her eyes were soft and kind and green. He watched them shift worriedly from his face to the paper, and then she paled.

 

“Oh, goodness.” She pulled the paper from his hands and they hovered there, awkward and empty. “I didn’t meant to give you today’s paper. I thought I grabbed an old one.” Flora rolled the paper against her hip, set the water on the table beside the rocking chair and then took Cedric by the shoulders. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you-”

 

Cedric shook his head. He lost the strength to stand in one breath, dropping heavily into the rocking chair, and Flora stayed close to keep at his eye level. 

 

“How can they not believe him?” Cedric said, and he was crying. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. It was tears of frustration and fear - if no one believed Harry, if no one believed  _ him _ , then how could they prepare for Voldemort’s return? He searched Flora’s eyes again. “Do you believe me?”

 

Flora frowned. She reached out to smooth Cedric’s hair out of his eyes but he pulled back. She sighed and turned away, picking up the mess on the floor. “I believe something awful happened to you, Cedric,” she said, folding the quilt back into a modest square.

 

“You’re right. Something awful did happen to me.” Cedric leaned close to her. “I died. And it was because of Vol-” He clicked his mouth shut. “Because of You-Know-Who.”

 

“I think we should get you back to bed-” she started to put her hands on him, to ease him out of the chair, but Cedric recoiled.

 

“ _ No _ !”

 

And he smacked her hands out of his face.

 

The room was quiet. Cedric wasn’t sure how long everyone had been staring, but there were certainly no efforts to be discreet now. One nurse, Cedric noticed, had a hand to his pocket, over the outline of his wand, and he seemed ready and determined to use it.

 

Cedric flushed. He looked away from them, away from Flora, to his hands in his lap. They were trembling.

 

Cedric took after his father. Like him, Cedric was level headed, soft, kind. Even the stress of the Tournament failed in shaking him to his core.

 

Where was his resolve now? His calm? Had it disappeared with whatever else was taken that night? Would more and more pieces of him start to break away until an entirely different person was born?

 

Had the real Cedric Diggory died? Was he just a ghost of who he was before?

 

Cedric felt very ill with the realization that his life would now be divided into two parts: before he died and after he died. The space between them was a canyon.

 

“I am different,” Cedric said. The words cracked in his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

 

Flora placed her soft, warm hands over his own. She forgave him.

 

Back in his room, Cedric wrote his first letter. He didn’t care if the Daily Prophet or Fudge or whoever found out that he was sending it, either. 

 

_ Harry _ , he wrote, pinching the quill so hard between his fingers he was afraid it would snap in half.  _ I believe you. Thank you for bringing me back. _

 

* * *

 

 

The day Dumbledore visited him was the first time Cedric walked on his own since he had arrived nearly two weeks before. It was just the length of his room but his parents were flush with pride, congratulating every step, and he felt very much like he had during his first match of elementary Quidditch. He was seven, the brooms were very low to the ground, and it was more like a very slow game of hovering catch than bearing any resemble to true Quidditch, but one would have believed Cedric had just won the World Cup with the way his parents yelled and applauded from the sidelines.

 

He’d been too young then to know he should have been embarrassed but he was all too aware now. Especially with Flora in the room. She watched on kindly, not a trace of pity in her gaze, but Cedric still wished she wasn’t there, that his parents would be quiet, and that walking by himself was not such a cause for celebration. 

 

Cedric never considered himself someone who preferred to be alone but right then he would have given anything to be in an abandoned field somewhere, out of the cramped four walls of his hospital room, the stuffy St. Mungo’s hallways, away from the nurses and doctors and his parents, away from everyone’s curious, prying eyes, and to be completely isolated.

 

He imagined this type of place every time he fell asleep, which was less frequently now, and hoped the serene silence would carry into his dreams, but Harry was always waiting for him on the other side, screaming. 

 

When Cedric finally returned to his bed he was more winded than he wanted to admit, though he assured Flora and his parents that he was fine. He relaxed back into the mattress, positive that it would soon mold to the rest of his body from how much time he’d spent in it.

 

“What are they saying about me in the paper now?” Cedric whispered to his mother after his father stepped out to talk with Flora and some other staff about his ‘progress’. Amos avoided the question whenever Cedric asked and he hadn’t been able to get his hands on a current paper since his outburst in the lounge. His mother was a much more blunt person. Eleanor Diggory had always been more direct than her husband - never rude, but forward. 

 

“The focus has turned from you to poor Harry, these days,” she said, keeping a careful eye on the door. “And the Headmaster.”

 

Cedric flexed his hands at his sides. “I don’t understand why they’d think we’d lie about this,” he said.

 

Eleanor smiled, but it was sad. “Because that would mean they’d have to face the possibility of war time again. You were young then, Cedric. You don’t remember how awful it was.”

 

Cedric looked away. He’d been only three when Voldemort disappeared. He did not remember any of that time. Two years later, his sister would die. He remembered that much more clearly.

 

He sank into the pillow at his head. “The Minister was there. He saw me …” Cedric frowned, crossed his arms over his chest. “And to kill the only other witness? I know Barty was a madman, but he would have credited us. He’d’ve served his time in Azkaban like a proper criminal, and someone,  _ someone  _ would have done time for what happened to me -”

 

“Cedric.”

 

His mother’s cool, calming touch at his elbow pulled Cedric out of an angry haze he hadn’t even realized he’d dragged himself into. He huffed, swivled his arm around so he could take his mother’s hand in his own and met her eyes. They were grey like his. Everything else about him was so much of his father. He was glad to have a piece of her, too. 

 

He wondered, not for the first time, if his little sister would have looked like her. He thought his mother very beautiful, so he hoped so. 

 

Eleanor smiled tenderly. “We believe you and Harry. We owe him a debt that we couldn’t possibly even begin to repay, so the least we can do is trust he speaks the truth.” 

 

“Mum?” Cedric squeezed her hand. “How do you think Harry did it? Bring me back?”

 

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I thank God everyday for it, whatever it was. After Charlotte -” Eleanor paused, put one hand to her mouth, and closed her eyes. All these years had done little to heal the wound the loss of her daughter had left behind. “I didn’t know how we were going to make it after Charlotte. It was you who held us together, who kept us strong. Losing you would have …” She took a deep breath, met his eyes again, her own filled with tears. 

 

“Mum.” Cedric sat up and pulled his mother into a hug. She stroked the back of his head like he was small. He supposed he always would be to her, no matter how old he was, no matter what happened. He held her tightly. “I love you.”

 

“I love you, too,” she whispered, and when she pulled away she made a quick show of becoming presentable again before Amos returned, and when he did they both turned expectantly toward the door only to all but leap in surprise. 

 

“Professor,” Cedric blurted, shocked.

 

Dumbledore smiled at him from behind Amos, sweeping in with long navy robes and coming straight to Cedric’s bedside. He shook Cedric’s hand first, then his mother’s, who was stunned into silence. Amos watched on, positively glowing. He’d always been very fond of Dumbledore.

 

“I hope you are all doing well,” Dumbledore said, looking at each of the Diggorys in the eye with total sincerity and settling on Cedric when he spoke again. His eyes twinkled behind his crescent shaped glasses.“It is so good to see you, Cedric.”

 

“You too, sir, thank you, sir.”

 

“Relax,” he said, and he touched Cedric’s shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and maybe there was a bit of magic in his touch because Cedric did, instantly.

 

“Headmaster, my wife and I have been meaning to write to you -” Amos crossed the room and wrapped an arm around Eleanor’s shoulders, beaming at the professor. “But I’m grateful we have a chance to say it to your face. We believe you, Headmaster. We believe you and the young boy who saved our son.” Amos squeezed Eleanor, smiled at her, and then up at Dumbledore again, who surpassed him in height by several inches. “We thank you for all that you’ve done.”

 

For a moment, Cedric was overwhelmed with the love he had for his parents. They stood tall and proud before the Headmaster, resilient, brave, knowing full well that the masses stood against them. To side with Dumbledore, with Harry, with him, that meant standing against everyone else. That was no small feat. Amos might be a simple Magizoologist to anyone else, something Draco Malfoy had once teased Cedric for despite being three grades younger, and Eleanor a natural mother and housewife, but to Cedric they were the strongest, kindest people he’d ever known. He felt foolish for being so embarrassed of them before. Who could be ashamed of such wonderful people?

 

Dumbledore put one hand on each of his parents’ shoulders. He thanked them, praised them for having raised such a brilliant young man, and then asked for a moment alone with Cedric. They both agreed, told Cedric they’d be in the tearoom upstairs, and shook Dumbledore’s hand again. Cedric smiled as they left the room, feeling incredibly blessed.

 

Dumbledore whispered something to Cedric’s parents at the door, then closed it behind them and came back to his bedside. As Dumbledore lowered himself into the chair Cedric’s mother had previously occupied, he summoned it closer wordlessly with a wave of his hand, settling with a content sigh, elbows on the armrest and his fingers lacing together in the air. 

 

“Cedric,” Dumbledore said, his smile fond. “I said it once already but it is truly great to see you. How are you feeling?”

 

“I’m okay.” The response was automatic. When Dumbledore raised his white eyebrows in disbelief and waited, Cedric relented. “Very sore. Tired. But it’s getting better. I’m hoping to go home at the end of the week.”

 

“Marvelous,” Dumbledore’s smile grew. “The other professors and I agreed to postpone the graduation ceremony until I had a chance to see how you were feeling. If you’re home by the end of the week, we could celebrate it by having the end of the year feast and the ceremony this weekend …” Dumbledore trailed off, concern replacing his hopeful expression the longer he watched Cedric. “Are you alright?”

 

The blood had rushed out of Cedric’s face. He shook his head, but when Dumbledore rose to fetch a nurse he motioned quickly for him to stop. “No, no, it’s not … sir,” Cedric said, waiting for Dumbledore to sit again. Cedric looked at the hills of his knees under the blankets and pulled them closer. “Sir,” he started again, taking a deep breath. “I don’t want to attend the graduation ceremony.”

 

Dumbledore blinked slowly, then leaned back in the chair. “That is certainly your choice. May I ask why?”

 

“I …” A line formed between his brows as Cedric brought them together. “I know what they’re calling me in the paper. The Resurrected Boy.” He glanced toward the door. “Everyone whispers it in the hallways. Everyone stares at me. But it’s different from how they stared at me when I was in the Tournament.”

 

“It is the way people stare at Harry Potter.”

 

Cedric’s breath caught. He nodded. “I know winning the Tournament would have singled me out. I was okay with that. But for being the Resurrected Boy? Not so much.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how Harry does it, to be honest.”

 

“With courage.” Dumbledore placed his hand on Cedric’s shoulder again. “I am so sorry that this happened to you, Cedric. Hogwarts failed to protect you, I failed to protect you, and it is something that I regret deeply.”

 

“Sir, there’s no way you could have known -”

 

Dumbledore silenced him with a swift wave of his hand. “The blame rests on myself.”

 

“No,” Cedric said. “It rests on Voldemort.”

 

Dumbledore’s eyes cut through his glasses, as sharp and blue as ice. Neither of them spoke for a time, the name swelling between them like a living thing, until Dumbledore withdrew his hand. “As much as we would love to have you at the ceremony, I respect your decision.”

 

“There is another thing, professor.” Cedric glanced at the door and back again. “Something I haven’t told the doctors. Not even my parents.”

 

Dumbledore leaned closer. “Is there something I can do?”

 

“I don’t know.” Cedric paused, then leaned opposite Dumbledore and rummaged in the drawer of the table at his bedside. He produced his wand, sat back against the pillow, and let it rest on the palms of both hands. “Sir, I …” He closed his fingers around the ash wood. When he tried to speak again his throat felt too tight.

 

“What is it, Cedric?” 

 

Cedric looked up at Dumbledore, blinked, and realized as something chased the length of his cheek that he was crying. Cedric flushed, using his shirt cuff to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed.

 

“There’s no reason to be.”

 

Cedric waited until he could catch his breath. He switched the wand to his right hand and held it up, point toward the ceiling, and closed his eyes.

 

“I can’t do magic.” Cedric gasped - out loud, the words had more power. They cut him to his core, threatened to pierce him all the way through. “I haven’t been able to do a single spell since I got here.” Cedric opened his eyes. He squeezed the wand until his knuckles bleached white. “I didn’t realize it until a few days ago. I woke up in the middle night. I was trying to get to the washroom. I didn’t think I needed a nurse to help me but it was dark, so I tried to do a lumos spell …” Shaking his head, Cedric took another deep breath that stuttered in his lungs. “It’s gone.”

 

Dumbledore came closer. He took the hand Cedric held his wand with and clasped it tightly between both of his own, his long weathered fingers cool on Cedric’s skin. The wand went through the middle like a sword in a stone. 

 

“You have been through something terrible, Cedric. Your body, your mind, they are still healing. Give yourself some time.”

 

The tears were coming harder now but Dumbledore looked at Cedric so strongly, he couldn’t manage to turn away.

 

“Has this ever happened before?” Cedric asked, struggling to keep his voice even. “Has a wizard or a witch ever lost their magic?”

 

Dumbledore’s face fell. He peeled his hands away and sat back in the chair, eyes distant although they were directed at Cedric’s wand. When he spoke it was so softly that Cedric had to lean closer to hear him properly.

 

“There was a witch, a very long time ago, who was attacked by a group of Muggle boys when she was young. It was cruel, mindless violence, and they beat her brutally. She was harmless, defenseless … and this scarred her, wounded her so deeply that she did not recover fully in the short span of her life. Her magic did not disappear, so to speak, but she was unable to control it, could not use it at will …” Dumbledore seemed to peer directly into the past, watching this girl suffer in echoes. He found the present in Cedric’s eyes and pulled himself forward again. “That may be what is happening with you now. Perhaps it will take longer than you would like for you to use magic the way you are accustomed, but it is like a broken bone, Cedric. One does not continue walking on a fractured femur.” He smiled gently. “You must allow yourself to heal.”

 

“Did she die, that girl?” Cedric asked, and Dumbledore’s smile turned sad, like his mother’s.

 

“She did. But it was not related.”

 

“Who was she, professor?”

 

“Ariana Dumbledore.” Dumbledore looked down at his hand, at a ring with a pink gemstone on his smallest finger, and used his thumb to idly rotate it back and forth. “My sister.”

 

Cedric’s tears stopped. He’d had little contact with Dumbledore personally during his years at Hogwarts before the Tournament. It was a big school, Dumbledore was a busy man, and it’s not like Cedric had been sitting on his thumbs until his last year. All that time and Cedric had only thought of the Headmaster in terms of what he represented rather than who he was - a great, talented, legendary and powerful wizard, but still a wizard, with as many skeletons in the closet as the next one, if not more. Cedric wondered what else he might have in common with Dumbledore, and if this was what he looked like when he talked about his own sister. His mouth hung open, ready to say something, but much like Cedric was quick to silence Fudge, Dumbledore did the same. He waved the words away, came to his feet, and extended his hand to Cedric again. Cedric took it, his wand still held fast in his other hand.

 

“Please, let me know if you change your mind about the ceremony, and if there is anything else you or your parents need, do not hesitate to send word.”

 

“Thank you, sir. And sir, please, don’t mention anything about this to my parents. Or anyone.” He swallowed. “I want to tell them myself.”

 

“Of course.” Dumbledore’s smile was full and genuine again. He held Cedric’s hand for a moment longer before he made his way toward the door, robes billowing around his feet, but when he reached the door he turned back like he had forgotten something, a finger raised in the air. “Also, if you are feeling up for it, a friend of yours tagged along who would like to see you.”

 

Cedric tensed. He wasn’t ready to see Cho yet but he knew it would be rude to decline. He smiled and nodded. “Great.”

 

“I’ll fetch them from the tearoom upstairs. Do not give up hope, Cedric Diggory.” Dumbledore smiled again and left, the door clicking shut behind him, and Cedric collapsed against the pillow, breathing out hard and fast.

 

He held his wand at arm’s length above his face and stared at it. It was as ordinary as a quill in his hand, no thrum of energy, no connection. It no longer felt like an extension of his arm, another part of his being, but rather a lifeless prop. He flicked his wrist, whispered, “Lumos,” but the wand remained unlit.

 

Amos Diggory bragged that from the day Cedric was born, he and Eleanor knew that he would be a strong, brave wizard. Magic through and through. His father had told him once, “Magic is not in our blood, son. It  _ is  _ our blood.”

 

Then what was in his heart now?

 

Cedric had realized the night he first tried to use magic that the emptiness inside of him, the missing piece that had not come back with him from wherever he went that night of the maze, that it was a part so intricately woven into the fabric of his being that he never once considered what life would be like without it. 

 

That life unfolded before him then, down the length of his arm and out from his now useless wand, and it was dark.

 

Cedric didn’t quite catch the thought as it first formed in his mind, a whisper in a great cacophony, a single voice a chorus, but its echo made him still, silenced everything else, and there it was. 

 

For a sliver of a moment, Cedric wished he was the Resurrected Boy no longer, and just a dead one.

 

Cedric sat up, heart in his ears, and stuffed his wand back into the bedside table drawer. When he closed it he imagined locking up the thought along with it, but being contained did not make it disappear.

 

A knock at the door. Cedric smoothed down his hair, wiped once more at his eyes, and tried to smooth out the blankets with his shaking hands. “Come in,” he called, then held his breath as he raised his head to meet Cho’s eyes.

 

Instead, he saw a lightning bolt scar. 

 

The open circle of Harry’s mouth looked like it was prepared to say something but whatever it was had disappeared the moment he entered the room. It dawned on Cedric just then that he had never seen Harry in anything other than his uniform, making his denim and jumper - Gryffindor red - almost bizarre. Cedric found himself convinced that Harry’s hair must grow at twice the rate of a normal person because in the short time they’d been separated, Harry’s shaggy mop was even more wild and unruly. 

 

Cedric remembered the first time he saw Harry Potter at the Sorting ceremony his fourth year. The idea of Harry Potter preceded the real thing, and Cedric remembered feeling a bit disappointed when he saw a boy of eleven, average other than his scar, and so very small. 

 

Cedric saw Harry then, one foot still in the hallway and one hand on the frame of the door, watching Cedric with spring grass green eyes part frightened and part hopeful, and Cedric didn’t see an average boy at all. 

 

He saw Harry Potter. Not the idea, not the legend, as much the Boy Who Lived as Cedric was the Resurrected Boy, bigger and greater than his title. Cedric saw Harry and felt at peace for the first time since he was brought back from the dead.

 

“Harry,” Cedric said, because it was all he could think to say, and Harry gasped, as if he were surprised to hear Cedric speak, like he had not truly believed Cedric was alive until this moment.

 

And then Harry sprinted across the room like he was riding a Firebolt and crashed into Cedric with such force that Cedric lost his breath. Harry’s arms wound around Cedric’s chest, fingers curling into the back of his shirt, cheek to cheek, and for a moment Cedric just sat there in stunned silence, thoughts scattered to the wind. But it was only a moment, and then Cedric was wrapped around Harry, too, laughing with breathless relief in his ear.

 

“Harry,” Cedric repeated, squeezing the boy in his arms. He still couldn’t manage to find any other words but his name. 

 

Harry withdrew but remained close, grinning. He studied Cedric, scanning his face from his hairline to his chin and back again, as if making confirmation that he was indeed solid, alive, and not an illusion. “You’re okay,” Harry said, still in disbelief. 

 

Cedric faltered for a second. ‘Okay’ seemed … relative, but now wasn’t the time. He nodded, smiled, and gestured to the chair Dumbledore had been sitting in before. Harry sat and continued to marvel at Cedric, and Cedric at Harry, until they both realized at the same moment that neither had spoken for an unusually long amount of time, simply staring at each other.

 

Cedric cleared his throat. Harry shifted in the chair and they both looked away, at the floor, the bed, and then back to one another.

 

They laughed in unison.

 

“It was good seeing your father again. And your mother is very nice,” Harry finally said, as way of breaking the ice.

 

“So that’s what Dumbledore told them when they left, that you were here.” Cedric shook his head. “But he wouldn’t tell me. He likes surprising people, doesn’t he?”

 

Harry’s grin broadened. “You have no idea.” He touched the tip of his middle finger to the bridge of his glasses even though they hadn’t moved down his nose at all, a nervous habit Cedric noticed during the tournament. Harry turned his eyes down to his lap, the fingers of one hand picking under the nails of the other. “I got your letter,” he said, glancing up briefly, then back to his fidgeting digits. “Thank you, by the way.”

 

“Harry, simply  _ believing _ you are telling the truth is the least I can do, but I was there. I saw -” Cedric paused. “I saw enough.” He met Harry’s gaze. “He’s back. Voldemort.”

 

He’d said it several times now, that name. It was too ominous to say in his youth. Powerful, too, and it still was, but speaking it no longer felt like a curse. It was acknowledgement of something even worse. 

 

Harry’s face had fallen to something too solemn for a boy of nearly fifteen. “Yes. He is.” 

 

“What do we do now?” 

 

Harry frowned at his hands. “I don’t know, really. But we’ll think of something.”

 

They were silent for a while, the uncertain future unfolding before them and neither wanting to look forward.

 

“The Minister came to see me. Kept asking if I had been in contact with you.” Cedric shook his head. “He’s convinced we’re a part of some conspiracy.”

 

Harry laughed and shook his head. “Contrary to what everyone wants to believe of me, I just want to pass all of my classes and not be the center of attention. For once.” He touched his glasses again. Crossed his legs at the ankle under his chair, then uncrossed them again. 

 

“Harry Potter,” Cedric said, and waited for him to look up. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

 

Harry cracked a smile. It looked good on him. “You’re probably right.” 

 

Cedric smiled back at him, and the two fell into silence once more, but it was comfortable, both reflecting on their own thoughts. When Cedric spoke again, Harry seemed more relaxed, all of his nervous twitching stilled. 

 

“Do you know what you did to bring me back?” Cedric asked, studying Harry’s eyes when he looked at him. “What spell you cast? What magic it was?”

 

The question was answered by a slow shake of Harry’s head. “I don’t know.”

 

“What do you remember?”

 

Harry bit his lip for a few moments, eyes searching the floor. “When we got back to the front of the maze, you’d already been … gone for a long time. You were cold. I was … I was crying …” Harry’s eyes narrowed, and Cedric could see his chest rising and falling more quickly. “I don’t know what I did. I was crying, holding you, and your father was calling for you, and I just …” He shifted his gaze back to his hands, spread them open to look at his palms like he’d never seen them before. “I didn’t want you to be dead. And then …” He curled his fingers. “You weren’t.”

 

“Eerie,” Cedric recited quietly from memory. “A blinding white light, and a terrible bang.”

 

“I didn’t think it was eerie.” 

 

Cedric met Harry’s eyes, the brilliant emeralds of dead kings’ crowns. 

 

“I thought it was beautiful,” Harry said, his voice tangibly sincere, and then he flushed with embarrassment. “Very weird, though.”

 

Cedric smiled. “If that isn’t the summary of your life.”

 

“And yours, now, too.” Harry said, sympathetic. “You’re famous. And not for being the Triwizard Victor.”

 

Shaking his head, Cedric motioned vaguely in the air. “I can’t believe they even care to think about that with everything that’s going on.”

 

“Fudge has his head in the sand. He’s determined to keep everyone else there, too. You did deserve it, though.”

 

“Triwizard Victor. The Resurrected Boy.” Cedric smoothed his hands over the beige hospital blanket. “I’d like to just be Cedric, if the world doesn’t mind.”

 

“You’re Cedric to me,” Harry said. “But I’d never use the word ‘just’.”

 

Cedric glanced up. They smiled at each other.

 

“Cedric, do you remember …” Harry hesitated, unsure if he should proceed.

 

“What?”

 

He took a deep breath. “Do you remember speaking to me after … after you were killed?”

 

Cedric stared at him blankly.

 

“You were a … well, you were a ghost,” he explained, and shivered with the memory. He closed his eyes briefly. “You and my parents were there, actually, as … echoes, that’s how Dumbledore described it. You all spoke to me.” He reopened his eyes. “Do you remember that?”

 

When Cedric breathed in, he swore he smelled old soil, late evening fog, decay. His breath came out in a rattling burst. “No,” he said. “I remember green light and then … nothing. What did I say?”

 

“You asked me to … bring you back with me, for your parents.” 

 

It was only for a few moments, but Cedric imagined it vividly: his father mourning over his body, his mother collapsing at the news, and being lowered into the ground beside Charlotte in the Diggory plot. 

 

“Thank you, Harry,” Cedric managed, even though his chest and throat were tight, and his heart was hammering in his ears. “For everything.”

 

“You would have done the same for me.”

 

“Brought you back to life?” Cedric shook his head. “I think you may be the only wizard who can do that, Harry Potter.”

 

They looked at each other with mutual understanding. Harry raised a hand, like he was going to reach out for him, and then decided against it, lowering it back to his lap.

 

“Are you sure you’re okay, Cedric?”

 

The automatic answer didn’t come. Cedric frowned and looked to the bedside table on the opposite side of the bed. 

 

“Cedric?”

 

Cedric came around again. “Honestly? No. Not entirely. But I hope to be.”

 

Harry didn’t offer any rehashed words of optimistic advice, he didn’t tell Cedric to just hang in there and be tough, or be grateful, or anything. Harry just accepted his answer with a nod. 

 

Cedric figured that in all of the Wizarding world, or the whole planet for that matter, the only person who could even begin to understand the Resurrected Boy was the one who brought him back. 

 

They talked for a while longer - about the other Triwizard contestants, their fellow students, St. Mungo’s - and then Harry rose to take his leave. He hesitated at the bedside, then hugged Cedric abruptly for a second time, and Cedric held him there for several moments longer than he had the first. 

 

“I’ll write you,” Harry said, squeezing Cedric around his shoulders. 

 

“I’ll write back.” And Cedric meant it. 

 

Harry paused in the doorway and turned back to Cedric one last time before he left, and they both looked at each other as if expecting the other to vanish before their eyes, but they remained, in flesh, bewildered and alive. They exchanged smiles, and then Harry was gone. 

 

When Cedric went to bed that night, Harry was waiting for him in his dream again, but he was no longer screaming. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, this update took forever and a half. I have no excuses except that I'm tired. So.
> 
> I very nearly gave up on this story after it was pointed out to me that I made sort of a huge error regarding Cedric's age/year in Hogwarts. For that I blame entirely on the fact that I'm American, okay. I knew without having to do research that Cedric was seventeen at the start of the Tournament, and I figured - falsely - that if he was seventeen already, he'd be turning eighteen within that year, and that would mean he would have to graduate.
> 
> Does that make sense? Probably not. But that was my line of logic and I honestly didn't even think to double check that, and once I realized my mistake I was like "welp that throws everything out the window!" and I almost just deleted everything.
> 
> But. I'm gay. And tired. And I want Cedric to live and I was just like "fuck it" so you know what? It's fine. He's a year older than he's supposed to be. I think, in the Harry Potter fandom, there have been crazier things, yeah?
> 
> Lmao anyway, enjoy!

Cedric's bedroom was exactly as he left it the last time he was there during Christmas holiday, more than six months earlier. Everything was left untouched; summer clothes still neatly folded in drawers, collector Quidditch cards in their same respective stacks, his small library undisturbed. There was a Muggle clock radio on his bedside table that Arthur Weasley gave him for his twelfth birthday, set to the only station he'd found that worked (some sort of Muggle jazz, which he quite liked), and on the map above his tidy desk was a circle he drew with a quill when he was four around the small town of Ottery St. Catchpole.

"That's where we live," he'd said to his sister, smiling at her as she bounced on his mother's hip and blew bubbles with her spit. "That's home."

Cedric reached out and traced the circle with his fingertip like it would bring that moment back to him and every feeling with it.

It was just stiff paper.

He deposited his suitcase on the bed. His duvet bore the shamrock crest of the Irish National Quidditch Team - his mother made it with her own needle and thread but it could have sold professional in a shop as far as Cedric was concerned. When he was young his mother talked often of starting her own business, making handmade baby clothes and blankets and other beautiful things, a talent her mother had passed on to her, and one Eleanor hoped she could share with Charlotte one day. Maybe even Cedric, if he took to it.

But death stole Charlotte and snuffed out the light of his mother's dream and robbed the world of many beautiful things. And Cedric never did take to it.

He'd once overheard Hermione Granger in the courtyard at Hogwarts talking about space and time and alternate universes with a couple of Ravenclaws; up until then, Cedric had considered himself too dim to have anything to do with a witch three years his junior who could likely walk circles around him in any of his classes (eavesdropping on the conversation only confirmed this suspicion). Apparently this was something they taught in Muggle schools. She spoke of different timelines and the space time continuum and used words Cedric never heard in his life, but what he understood was that in another universe, there was another Cedric Diggory, another Amos and Eleanor, and in that universe was another Charlotte, one who lived, and she helped their mother in a shop called Diggory's Baby.

At the time, the idea comforted him.

That also meant there was a universe in which he died young instead of her. One where they were Muggles. One where his parents never met and neither he nor his sister existed.

One where Cedric didn't take the cup at the same time as Harry at the end of the maze.

One where he wasn't selected to participate in the Tournament at all.

There was a universe where he went into the final task of the Tournament alive and returned dead, and Harry Potter did not resurrect him.

Goosebumps raced across his flesh. He realized with a slow blink that he'd spent the last several minutes staring blankly at his open suitcase. As he began to unpack he wondered if a member of the staff had gathered his things or if it had been one of his friends. He couldn't imagine Edward or Finn or anyone in his dormitory folding anything this nicely. Thinking of them taking the time to do it made his heart hurt.

The box he carried under his arm held all of the letters he'd received at St. Mungo's, most of which were from his fellow Hufflepuffs and closest friends. Several from Cho. None of them were opened. He put the box away first - under his desk.

Cedric returned his texts to the bookshelf and hung his robes in the closet. Uniforms were placed in dresser drawers and his wand was set beside the radio. His broom rested against the side of his headboard. When the suitcase was empty, he rolled it into his closet like he did at the end of every school year, and then sat on the edge of the bed. He held his arms at the elbows and felt very small; it was strange to be in his own clothes again after weeks of hospital gowns, especially now that they were all too big. He still didn't have much of an appetite - if his mother didn't remind him to eat, he'd probably forget to do it at all.

It took him a minute of silence to realize this was the last time he'd ever do this, that everything he put away would have no reason to come out again. It didn't occur to him until that moment that he'd never sleep in the Hufflepuff dormitory again, or study in the common room, or eat in the Hall, or lounge with friends on the Hogwarts grounds. There would be no more Quidditch games, no more House Cup, no more kissing pretty Ravenclaw girls in the dark corners of the library, or thinking about cute Syltherin boys in class -

All of this would have happened whether he became the Resurrected Boy or not. He knew this. But in another universe, he wasn't the Resurrected Boy. In another universe, he would have had a chance to say goodbye to Hogwarts in the right way. In another universe he could still ride his broom and cast a spell.

He envied the Cedric who still had his magic. He envied the Cedric who never knew what magic was and couldn't begin to understand how much it hurt to lose it.

He envied the dead Cedric and the Cedric who never lived.

It was childish and stupid of him to cry, but he did it anyway. Cedric slipped under the blanket his mother made for him and pulled the pillow over his head and cried until he was sick to his stomach.

* * *

 

The night before the Hogwarts graduation ceremony, Cedric sat at the dinner table with his parents on either side. Across from him was the ever present empty chair. He twirled his fork in a bed of noodles but had yet to actually try them; food still held little appeal. Everything tasted like dust.

Dying and coming back apparently meant everything he once found joyful was taken from him.

_Merlin's beard_ , he thought to himself, pressing the heel of one hand into his forehead and rubbing the space between his eyebrows. He really was becoming the epitome of a downer, wasn't he?

"Honey?"

"I'm fine," Cedric quipped, not looking up. Completely aware that both his mother and father had one eye trained on him, Cedric forced a forkful of noodles into his mouth and chewed. Nothing about it was satisfying, so he switched to his roll of bread. He found no comfort there, either.

A typical Diggory dinner was filled with conversation, a good portion of it from his father, but around this time of year when Cedric came home from Hogwarts, he was usually the center of attention. His parents would ask for every detail of his days at school, how his professors were, his studies, which of his friends had started dating, whom he had a crush on … he knew his mother would just adore hearing all about Cho.

But they ate in relative silence. His father had made a few remarks about the cooking to his mother, and she thanked him, and Cedric said nothing, and then the tension would grow again like a great big balloon hovering over the table, ready to pop.

Cedric made it clear before he was discharged from St. Mungo's that he was not going to attend the graduation ceremony at Hogwarts. He did not ask for permission. He did not make sure it was alright with them first. Any room for wiggling would only give his father in particular a chance to chip away at his resolve until Cedric caved, and Cedric wasn't having it. Besides, telling them at St. Mungo's in front of the staff meant that there wouldn't be a scene. His father had pinched his face together and his mother had frowned deeply, but both were too polite to argue in front of the nurses.

It was certainly the elephant in the room over dinner while the Diggorys picked at their food. Cedric hoped, probably foolishly, that they would respect his decision and let it go, but just as he was about to rise from the table and excuse himself for the evening, unable to eat a single bite more, his father set down his silverware and brought his hands together over his food, the way parents do when they're about to say something important. His mother also set down her silverware, folded her hands in her lap, and watched Amos like she was waiting for some kind of cue.

Had they rehearsed this?

"Son," Amos began, but Cedric set his fork down loudly and cut him off.

"I know what you're going to say. The answer is still no."

"Cedric," Eleanor said, but she too was halted, this time by Cedric standing up so fast that his chair screamed against the floor.

"You two can go, but I'm not. I can't." Cedric's fists pressed on the table on either side of his plate, head bowed over it. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Why?" Eleanor said, and her voice was tight, like she'd been on the verge of crying all night. "What's wrong, dear?"

Cedric lifted his heavy head with more effort than should be necessary. He looked at his mother and father in turn, both of their brows creased with worry. He saw himself in each of their faces: his mother's eyes, his father's nose, the dark Diggory hair - but he no longer felt a part of them. They had magic in their blood and he did not.

Cedric sat. He pushed his plate of food away, then folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. He opened his mouth, closed it, looked away from his parents and out of the dining room window. On the other side of the woods and down the hill north of his house was the Burrow, where the Weasleys lived. In the opposite direction a bit farther were the Lovegoods. He wondered what their dinner conversation consisted of. He wondered if there was a paper with his name on it on their doorsteps.

"I can't do magic." Cedric lifted a hand and rested his cheek in his open palm, not looking at either of them, and he suddenly thought of Harry, how at peace he felt when they were together in his room at St. Mungo's. He hadn't felt a shred of that peace since. He wished Harry were there, or Dumbledore, or anyone to keep his parents from breaking down the way he knew they would.

His mother cried. His father refused to believe him until Cedric demonstrated. When his wand remained unlit at the utterance of a simple lumos spell, Amos made him do it again, and again, until Cedric refused, slammed the wand on the table and stood.

"I'm writing to St. Mungo's," Amos declared, also coming to his feet. "You should have said something, Cedric. You should have told us sooner. The doctors were there to help you."

"Dad, please." Cedric ran a hand through his hair. "They did everything they could. You can't - you can't bring back magic."

Amos stared at him, eyes wide behind his glasses. He stepped around the table and gathered Cedric's face in his hands even when Cedric tried to turn away, holding him in place. "We thought you couldn't bring people back from the dead, either." Amos smiled but it trembled at the edges. He pulled Cedric into his shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. "Oh, Ced."

His mother joined them, a hand at the base of Cedric's neck. She kissed Cedric's cheek, smoothed down his hair, and they held him like he was small again, their little baby boy.

Cedric's eyes burned. "There's never been a Diggory squib," he said, voice muffled in his father's shirt collar. The arms around him tightened.

"You are not a squib. We will solve this," his father said. "I promise. We'll contact St. Mungo's in the morning -"

"No." Cedric detached himself from them and moved away, hands in his hair again. "I won't go back there."

"Cedric-"

"Please." Cedric backed away until he was met with the wall. He gripped his hair tightly until it hurt, eyes shut, and saw all of their faces again, the doctors and the nurses and the patients, watching him like he was a freakshow, a timebomb.

The train ride home from St. Mungo's to St. Catchpole had been the most uncomfortable two hours of his life. Pointing. Stares. Whispers. Even the ones who might have been kind for the sake of curbing their curiosity were displaced by what was written about him in the Prophet - that he and his parents stood by Harry and Dumbledore. He believed - he _knew_ Voldemort had returned, and they all thought that dying made him go mad. Why else would he align himself with delinquent Potter and senile Dumbledore?

He still didn't know how he kept himself from screaming. His mother's cool hand on his wrist, his father's arm around his shoulders, they were the only thing keeping him from springing to his feet and telling all of them what he'd seen, where he'd been. He wanted all of them to hear that terrible voice and see that awful green light and know what it felt like to die and come back again.

But he didn't. He had sat there because he had to, because if he did anything else it would only make things worse.

And everyone stared at him like death itself followed at his heels.

He'd only endured it up close for such a short time. He had the rest of his life to live as the Resurrected Boy.

How had Harry done it all these years?

He lowered his arms and remembered Flora's kind freckled face, Harry staring at him with relief in the doorway, and Dumbledore's weathered hands around his own. His parents watched him with lost, damp eyes.

The people he trusted now could fit in this room. Cedric tried to find comfort in the fact that at least he was not alone, but instead it felt suffocating.

"I talked to Dumbledore," Cedric said, crossing his arms and looking at his feet. "He said I need to heal. Maybe … maybe that's all I need. Just some more time." He looked up to his mother first. "I can't heal in that hospital any more than I already have. Okay? Please don't make me go back there."

Amos frowned. He turned to his wife and they spoke without words. Finally they both nodded, holding onto the other. They started to approach him, and Cedric knew they were going to hold him again, hug him and kiss him like a child, so Cedric stepped away before they could come close enough.

"I'm tired," he said, swiping his wand from the table. He wrung it in his hands like something he wanted to kill. "I'm just going to go to bed."

Amos and Eleanor exchanged looks. "Alright," his mother said, nodding. She laced her fingers with her husband's. When she spoke again, her voice wavered. "We'll see you in the morning?"

She phrased it like a question, like she wasn't sure what his answer would be. What did they think he was going to do? Run away? Where would he go?

It was a moment after he nodded and walked out the room that he realized what his mother was really asking - what she was begging him. _Please be here in the morning_.

For the second time since he'd been brought back, Cedric wished he hadn't. He had to shake his head to will the thought away but all it did was recede into the dark where he couldn't see it. It lingered.

He paused in the hallway outside of the closed door of his little sister's bedroom. It wasn't a forbidden room by any means but Cedric couldn't remember the last time he'd been inside. He was sure it was just storage now, a place for his mother to keep her fabric and yarn and half finished projects, photo albums, baby things. After Charlotte died, all of her toys migrated from where she'd last played with them into her room, all of her clothes folded neatly into boxes and stored away.

Cedric always regarded it as a kind of tomb.

Without thinking about it, Cedric put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and when he inhaled a second later, he smelled the crown of Charlotte's head and the shampoo in her little brown curls, her favorite banana pudding, baby powder - his eyes flickered closed and he saw her glossy grey eyes as if they were right in front of him, watching him, her giggle echoed in both of his ears and -

Cedric jerked back so fast the doorknob rattled. Before either of his parents could investigate the sound he moved to the end of the hallway, slipped into his room, and leaned his back against the closed door to catch his breath.

"Charlotte?" He didn't know why he said her name aloud, just that she seemed real again and he had to. He realized it was the first time he'd said her name in a long time. The sounds and smells were fading like he was rising from a dream. He closed his eyes and tried to see hers again but there was nothing but the red gold of his eyelids.

His hands snaked into his hair. Was he truly going mad? Was this what his life would be like now, once dead and then not? He felt like he was hovering between the living and the dead, phasing out of existence and back into it again. Space and time. A ghost. His stomach twisted. His knees buckled.

Everything inside of him was dark. What happened that night in the cemetery? _What did Harry do to him?_

Cedric made it to the bed and sat heavily. He held out his wand. "Lumos," he said, and nothing happened. "Lumos," he said again, with urgency. "Lumos. Lumos. _Lumos_!"

He begged. He cried. He needed the light and it wouldn't come.

* * *

 

They came in droves, the reporters, sometimes multiple times a day. Cedric was pretty certain one in particular was carrying polyjuice potion and changing their appearance every few hours - first they were a beautiful woman trying to charm Amos into letting her in for an interview, then they returned some time later as a handsome young writer throwing compliments at Eleanor that would have made the oldest witch burn in the face. Cedric suspected they were the same person because the third time they came they were a woman again but still had the voice of the young man before.

The questions were always the same. "Can we speak to your son? Is he well? Have you noticed anything strange since his return? Anything dangerous? Why was he forbidden to attend the Hogwarts ceremony? Is it because he insists on You-Know-Who's return? Do you support his fantasy? What do you have to say about the mysterious magic that brought your son back to life? Do you think Harry Potter is dabbling in Dark Arts? Is your son? Do you -"

"No comment," was all his parents ever said before shutting the door.

Eventually, Amos and Eleanor stopped answering altogether, drawing the blinds and becoming statues in their own home when someone knocked, remaining still and silent until the visitor gave up and left. One time it was the Weasleys who came but no one knew until after they'd gone, a pie waiting for them on their doorstep.

Cedric's father returned to work. Amos loved his job in the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures and most days returned to dinner with a fresh story about the Centaurs or the Merpeople or other fantastic beasts. His father's stories had dazzled Cedric as a child. But like everything in Cedric's life, his death had touched even this; Amos refused to speak of it in front of Cedric, but Cedric knew that he was being questioned at work as much as he was at home.

There were no more safe spaces. His mother wore a shawl around her face when she went to town for groceries. Cedric slipped out for fresh air every few days only to dart back in when snooping eyes with quills and parchment peeked around the trees in his yard.

They were caged in the house and the Prophet reporters hovered like vultures.

"I could take holiday," his father said one morning over breakfast. He was agitated, flushed from arguing with a reporter just a few minutes prior. "We could visit Frederick and Julie."

Cedric scoffed before he could catch himself and then shrank under the pained glance his father shot him. Cedric focused on the piece of toast he tore in pieces. "Uncle Frederick thinks I'm mad."

"He does not," Eleanor said, voice tight.

Cedric opened his mouth to tell her that he read the letter she'd tossed in the trash from her brother a few days ago, then decided to close his mouth and keep the fact that he was rummaging in the bin at night to himself.

Eleanor turned to her husband, her usually soft expression gone stern. "We are not being bullied out of our own home, Amos."

"We aren't getting any peace here, love, least of all Cedric. We should go somewhere on the seaside where he can relax and do some healing."

Cedric slipped deeper into his chair. They'd taken onto this, talking about him like he wasn't there. Sometimes he felt transparent, a ghost in his own home. There were times when he would cross his legs or sneeze and his parents would jump as if they'd forgotten he was in the room.

He never would have used the words quiet and reserved to describe himself in the past but Cedric felt like all of the color was bleeding out of the world and he found he had nothing to say, really. He read. He listened to Muggle radio stations alone in his room. He'd walk by Charlotte's old bedroom and pretend he did not hear a baby giggling behind the door.

Uncle Frederick was probably right about him going mad, honestly. Cedric was too exhausted to care. He slept up to ten hours a day much to his mother's chagrin but still felt like he was trying to function after spending a whole night studying for a potions exam. His muscles were sore, his joints ached, as if he'd fallen off his broom at some great height - as if when Harry brought him back to life, he'd left some parts of him dead.

The bickering at the table halted at the sound of three sharp knocks at the door. Cedric froze and curled his hands in his lap into fists under the table.

"Can't even have our breakfast in peace," Eleanor mumbled, and Amos shushed her.

"They'll leave. They always do."

After a brief pause, another knock came, followed by a distinctly male voice speaking something unintelligible. Cedric sighed, rolled his head until it craned over the back of his chair, and closed his eyes while he waited for them to leave.

Another voice, this one female. "Hufflepuffs don't go into hiding."

His eyes shot open. He knew that voice.

His father made a grab at him when he rushed the door but he was too slow; Cedric grabbed the door and ripped it open driven solely by his disbelief and his determination to prove himself wrong - but there she was, a willowy girl dressed in blue with hair so yellow it was nearly white. Wrapped around the crown of her head was a wire band with red and gold leaves weaved through its length.

"Luna?" Cedric blurted, still not quite believing what he was seeing. She turned away from the man accompanying her - her father - and beamed at him.

"Hello, Cedric."

Amos appeared at Cedric's side and pulled the door open more fully. "Xenophilius?"

"Mr. Diggory." Xenophilius smiled, reached out for Amos' hand but didn't shake it, just held it very gently between both of his own. "So good to see you."

Cedric continued to stare blankly at Luna in confusion. Luna was a year younger than Harry, four grades below himself, a small, dainty Ravenclaw with a rather peculiar reputation for being … peculiar.

The Lovegoods were once good friends of Cedric's parents. Most of the memories were over a decade old, fragmented and fuzzy, from when Charlotte was still alive. She was only a few months older than Luna. He recalled playdates, two round babies babbling nonsense at each other on the living room floor, while the Diggory and Lovegood parents cooed at them.

He remembered tiny, pale little Luna sleeping on her mother's chest at Charlotte's funeral.

Her mother and his mother remained good friends after that. Cedric remembered more about Pandora Lovegood than he did his own sister; she was tall and moved like a willow tree in the wind and her fingers were perpetually stained with ink from writing her research, carried with her at all times in a small leather book. There was always at least one flower in her hair. Cedric thought she was a rather strange lady, going on about things like nargles and trolls and faeries, but she made Eleanor laugh again after the long dark months following Charlotte's death, so he liked her. She was kind.

And then Pandora Lovegood died. In many ways, her death was even more surreal than Charlotte's. Sudden, like Charlotte's. Unnecessary, like Charlotte's. Cedric was twelve then, mature enough to realize the severity of such a tragedy, old enough to remember every awful detail. Luna was still tiny and pale - awake, but not present. Every time Cedric saw her after that, she looked the same. Distant. Here but not.

That moment with her standing on the other side of his front door was no different. She was looking right at him but might as well have been on the other side of the world.

"Well, don't just stand there, Amos," Eleanor called. "Invite them in!"

Cedric and Luna stood shoulder to shoulder and he shot her a sideways glance as his mother embraced her father. Luna's eyes, trailing lazily across the ceiling, drifted back to him like they'd been blown there from the wind. She smiled at him.

Cedric was at a loss. His lips thinned in what he hoped was a friendly gesture and then crossed his arms.

"How are you doing, my boy?" Xenophilius address Cedric and approached, placing two gentle hands on his upper arms. The way Xenophilius looked at him was … unsettling. It wasn't the same way people had stared at him on the train. He was almost marveling, like he couldn't quite believe Cedric existed at all.

Cedric opened his mouth to answer and glanced up, catching Xenophilius' eyes just as they blinked rapidly. His hands pulled away abruptly, like he'd been shocked, and Cedric frowned as Xenophilius exchanged a glance with his daughter that he couldn't decipher.

Cedric's eyes shifted quickly - from Xenophilius to Luna, his parents, and back again. "I'm fine," he said, tone wary. "Why are you here?"

"Cedric," his mother gasped, a hand fluttering at her chest. "Xenophilius, please forgive him, he is dealing with so much lately -"

"It's quite alright." Xenophilius smiled and stepped away. "He has every right to be suspicious. Luna and I have been distant since Pandora's death. It does seem strange that we would decide to visit now, unannounced, after what has happened."

For several beats, no one said anything. Lovegoods certainly had a way of silencing a room.

"So… why did you come, then?" Cedric asked again. Xenophilius' eyes were blue as thin ice when they turned to meet his own. They softened with what Cedric could only describe as awe, and he shifted uncomfortably under the older man's stare.

Luna turned toward the Diggorys. "Father and I wanted to make sure you knew that you're not alone out here. That we believe you." She returned her eyes to Cedric. "And Harry, and Dumbledore. That You-Know-Who has returned. Liars have a way about them, but you're not of that way, Cedric."

"Uh." Cedric cocked his head. "Thanks?"

"You're welcome."

"We don't generally read the Prophet in our home," Xenophilius said, and Cedric noticed that both Lovegoods always spoke in near whispers. Even the sound of the ticking clock on a nearby wall threatened to drown them out. "But after catching wind of what they were saying about you and poor Harry … we had to say something. To reassure you. Especially after how wonderful you all were to us after Pandora passed. I brought you a gift."

"Xenophilius," Amos said, smiling broadly. "That means so much to us. Thank you."

"I also have a message for you, Cedric," Luna chirped. "From Cho. She asked that I deliver it right away if I could -"

"Okay, uh-" Cedric cut her off abruptly and stepped around Luna, gesturing toward the hallway. "Let's go … catch up, then, yeah? In private?"

Luna smiled wistfully. "Of course."

Cedric avoided his parents' eyes as he lead Luna toward his bedroom with his hands stuffed into his denim pockets. He turned to step into his room and found that she was no longer at his heels; he twisted around and found her lingering in front of Charlotte's bedroom door.

He caught his breath. Luna faced the door, her fingertips hovering over the doorknob. She stood very still. Cedric wasn't even sure if she was breathing. Beyond her, down the hallway and in the other room was the murmuring of his parents' voices. Cedric watched Luna tilt her ear toward the door, listening.

To what?

And then she pulled back, just as quickly as Xenophilius had a moment before. She looked over at Cedric with another half formed smiled and approached him like she hadn't just done something incredibly odd. She moved in her blue dress the same way her mother had, both fluid and airy, like a cloud. Cedric wondered if it might have belonged to Pandora, before.

Cedric didn't want to know what she'd been doing - he already felt mad enough, and if any of the rumors were true, Luna wasn't too far off, herself. But, he figured, stepping to the side so Luna could come into his room, it's not like he had to worry about what people thought of him anymore. He read the Prophet. He already knew.

"What was that about?" Cedric asked, lingering in the threshold and motioning toward the hallway.

Luna didn't answer right away. She turned in a circle in the center of his room, taking in her surroundings with wide, observant eyes. She completed her survey when she faced him again. Her empty hands hung loosely at her sides.

The narrow slopes of her shoulders shifted in a shrug. "I remember her." she said. Her hands laced together. "People say it is impossible to remember things from when you were a baby. But I remember her. I remember her pink and white room." Luna took a step toward Cedric's bedroom window. The morning sun turned her skin luminescent. "She is buried not too far from my mother. Whenever we visit, we bring flowers for both of them."

Cedric's throat tightened. He passed Luna to sit on the edge of his bed and then gestured toward his desk chair, but Luna turned to face him and remained standing. Her stare was deep and probing and he had the distinct sensation of being cracked open under its intensity.

"You don't like to talk about her," Luna said, white hair spilling down her shoulder as she tilted her head. "Talking about the dead makes people uncomfortable."

"Yeah." Cedric crossed his arms. Uncomfortable enough that he regretted asking in the first place. He studied her in silence that was awkward for him but probably not for her and wondered if Charlotte would be as thin as Luna, if she would've been taller, if they would have stayed friends.

As always, Charlotte's life unfolded in front of him, an endless series of question marks.

"You said Cho had a message for me? I didn't realize you two were friends." In fact, Cedric was certain of it - he'd spent a great deal of time with Cho during the Tournament and not once had she mentioned Luna.

"We aren't. I was quite surprised when her family owl showed up. A pretty thing, she is. All black, but when the sun hits her feathers, they turn blue." Luna hummed and rocked back on her heels. "But we are both Ravenclaws and she asked a favor. She said you are ignoring her letters."

The box under his desk pulled at his eyes - he glanced, quickly, guiltily. Luna followed the subtle gesture and raised her blonde eyebrows.

"I'm ignoring everyone," Cedric mumbled, tightening his arms. "She didn't do anything wrong."

"She knows that." Luna took two steps toward the desk chair. Her shoes were more like slippers covered in tiny purple sequins that glittered as she moved. She sat and smoothed her dress across her lap with her tiny pale palms. "She wanted me to tell you that she's worried about you and that she misses you."

Cedric sighed. It felt elementary - not to mention cowardly - having a messenger between him and a girl he liked. He glanced up at Luna but she was staring dreamily out the window as if she couldn't care less about the conversation, or its content. "Was that all she said?"

"She asked if you wanted to break up with her." Luna took a deep breath and looked at Cedric again. "Seems a bit silly to me."

Cedric frowned. "Why is it silly?"

Two big blue eyes blinked slowly at him. "You died. And came back. And You-Know-Who has returned. Seems like there are more important things to be worried about." She shrugged.

Well, she wasn't wrong. Cedric ran a hand down his face. He liked Cho. Smart as a whip, true to the Ravenclaw name. She was funny. She was beautiful. When he saved her during the second Tournament challenge, he watched her face come back to life with a big loud breath and she was soaked and gasping and gorgeous, and he kissed her, right there in front of everyone in the water. She laughed in his mouth. He thought it'd be a story he would tell his children someday.

It wasn't that he didn't feel that way about her anymore. It was still there, wilting in his chest like a flower withering from neglect.

But how was he supposed to love someone when he was rotting from the inside? How could he be anything good for anyone else as a wizard with no magic? Besides, Cho's mother was in the ministry, her parents expected great things from her. She had talked about their pressure often, how she felt so suffocated.

How could he, in good conscious, try to pursue her - or anyone, for that matter - when so much was at stake? Being associated with Cedric Diggory, Hogwarts Champion of the Triwizard Tournament was one thing …

In another universe, perhaps, another time, another Cedric, he was allowed to love her.

But not this one. Not the Resurrected Boy.

Luna was right. Voldemort was a threat just on the horizon. Cedric was becoming a hermit in his home to escape the public who slandered him and the only people who he could trust on the front page. He had no magic. He was hearing things he shouldn't and probably teetering on the edge of the deep end and -

"Cedric?"

He hadn't realized he had sank his head into his hands until he pulled it out of them to look at her. She watched on with a crinkled brow of concern.

"I'm fine," Cedric said.

"I know you're not. You don't have to lie." She looked at her hands. "My father is very interested in how it happened. How Harry brought you back. He wants to write a column about it in the Quibbler in the Unexplained Events section."

Cedric couldn't help it - he laughed. Unexplained Events was a good descriptor for his life lately.

"Personally," she continued, "I don't think we should find out, though."

His laugh cut short. "Why?"

Luna was quiet for a while. She trailed a fingertip along the lines of her palm. "Because. Some sad people would try to bring back the ones they miss. Which seems like a good thing on the surface, but …" She frowned. It was a strange expression on her since she generally lacked one at all. "You were only gone for a few minutes, Cedric. Imagine trying to bring back someone who has been gone a long time … how hard that would be for them."

Cedric clasped his hands together so tightly his knuckles popped. "You wouldn't bring back your mom if you could?"

"That's a dangerous question." Luna met his eyes. She seemed more present, more _there_ than Cedric had ever seen her. "And I think you're a dangerous answer."

A shiver danced the length of Cedric's spine. He suddenly felt very cold, and the arms on the back of his neck stood straight. Rubbing his hands down his arms, Cedric took a deep breath and smelled - lilacs? And something smoky like incense, leather, quill ink, all at once, as dense as perfume.

Cedric squeezed his eyes shut. _Please_ , he begged, _please go away_.

"Many witches and wizards have gone mad trying to live forever. Now they know it is possible to reverse death." She shrugged again. "Doesn't matter that they don't know how it works. The possibility is enough." Leaning forward, Luna placed a cool hand on top of Cedric's. "I'm glad you're alive."

He peeled his eyes open, praying that he wouldn't see anything that wasn't supposed to be there when he did. It was only Luna."You just said I was dangerous."

"Only as much as Harry Potter. He survived a death curse." Luna smiled. She glanced at her hand where it met his own. A question formed in her eyes but she didn't speak it. "It's made everything a bit more difficult for him, hasn't it? But I'm glad he's alive, too."

Cedric's smile was faint and soft but it was there. Thinking of Harry made his heart feel more full in his chest. He nodded slowly. "Me, too."

Luna squeezed his hand and sat back. She returned to looking out the window while Cedric studied the floor in silence. He could still smell flowers in the room, could feel a set of eyes on him that he hadn't seen in years and knew that was impossible, but so many things were that had happened anyway.

This universe didn't care for impossibility. He was alive, wasn't he?

"Cedric?"

"Yeah?"

"What should I tell Cho?"

"Tell her I'm sorry." Cedric raised his head and held Luna's gaze until he was certain she understood exactly what he meant.

"I'll tell her not to worry," Luna added, smiling. "Because you'll always have Harry, right? Kind of hard not to after something like that."

"Yeah." Cedric straightened. "You're probably right."

The pair went out into the main room again, both glancing at Charlotte's bedroom door as they passed and neither saying a word about it, but found the living room empty. Cedric moved to the front door and pulled it open. Luna joined him at his side as they both watched their parents, Xenophilius between the two Diggorys, stand at the edge of the yard with their wands pointed toward the house.

"A Disguise," Luna said. "That's my father's gift to your family. Supposed to make the house look abandoned to anyone with ill intent. You don't have to worry about losing your post, though. Owls never have ill intent."

Cedric's brows came together."How did you know we were having trouble keeping reporters away?"

"We didn't." Luna turned her head up at him. "But the last time someone crossed You-Know-Who, he found them. My mother made this spell herself, after the Potters were killed."

Cedric's heart stopped. He stared at her. "I didn't - I didn't _cross_ him. I was there on accident. My mom and dad had nothing to do with it."

Silence stretched between them for a long time. The adults were almost upon them before she spoke again. "Harry was just a baby. Did that mean anything to You-Know-Who?"

Suddenly Cedric felt very ill and if the doorframe hadn't been there to support him, he might have fallen. Holding it with one hand, he looked out at his parents as they approached, stomach plummeting. Luna touched the back of his free hand with her fingertips. Her eyes fluttered down at the contact and she stared at where they met like she was trying to understand something and then slowly withdrew.

"Please be careful, Cedric." She whispered.

What did she sense when she touched him? What did her father?

Cedric wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Cedric," Xenophilius said before they departed, one arm around Luna's slim shoulders, making Cedric pause in the doorway after his parents trailed back inside. "You are welcome in our home anytime. My wife … she would have wanted to know what happened to you."

Cedric held his breath so he didn't have to smell ink and flowers in the breeze. He didn't speak. Simply nodded.

He watched the Lovegoods walk side by side down the road. After some distance, Luna began skipping.

* * *

 

The letters came for weeks. Every time one arrived - from Edward, Finn, Dumbledore, Professor Sprout, even one from Flora - he told himself that he'd actually read it this time. He would sit down and read it and write back because it was the polite thing to do, the right thing.

And every time they ended up in the box with the others under the desk, unopened.

It wasn't that he didn't appreciate their concern. He did, very much. But reading them meant hearing about all of the things he was missing. Reading them meant he'd have to reply. He didn't know what he would say. He knew that every single one of them wanted to know how he was doing.

How was he doing?

Stasis. The days were bleeding into each other. He didn't realize it was July until he was three days into it when he glanced at the calendar in the kitchen. He had no appetite and was losing weight so rapidly that he felt like he was swimming in his clothes. One day he mounted his broom for the hell of it in his bedroom, and when nothing happened he cried for two hours in his bed.

Sincerely, Cedric.

Honestly.

He knew the proper thing to do was just lie. Say he was coming along well, getting stronger every day, that no amount of dying would keep him from the try-outs for professional Quidditch come fall.

He also knew that he just needed to wait for the Daily Prophet to do their work and eventually the letters would stop.

Every headline was worst than the one before. First, Dumbledore was senile, then he was a madman, corrupting Harry to fit his own agenda (of what, they were never clear). Harry was any number of things according to "witnesses" (all of the quotes sounded suspiciously Malfoy in nature).

Everyone knew that Harry could speak to snakes. Everyone knew that Harry had survived Voldemort's curse. Everyone knew that he held a magic so strong it could resurrect the dead. What else was he capable of? How dangerous was he?

And, of course, there was enough about Cedric himself to make him want to crawl out of his skin. He was a conspiracer, gone into hiding, a ghost among the living. His parents tried to keep the Prophet away so as not to upset him, but he could hear them talk about it at night when they thought he was asleep.

The people called him _unnatural_. They called him a _phenomenon_. And that was on the tame side of things.

Eventually, the letters thinned and then stopped altogether.

Except for one more.

"It's from Harry," his father said. It was breakfast. Cedric looked up from his biscuits and gravy, pushed around until there was an empty space in the middle of the plate. His father stood at the kitchen window, scratching the chin of an owl white as snow. Her black eyes were pleased, narrowed slits.

"What?"

Amos smiled and held up the letter so his wife could see it, like they now owned something invaluable.

"Harry Potter himself. What a nice boy." He offered the owl a chip which she took with a small sound of satisfaction, and then took off. When he returned to the table, Cedric was already leaning across, his outstretched hand open, and his parents looked back at him with surprise at his sudden urgency. Amos glanced at his wife before handing it to Cedric.

Cedric held it in his lap. In the corner it read _Harry Potter, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey_.

"Cedric, dear. You're smiling."

Cedric looked up again. His mother had her hands over her mouth.

"Yeah?" Cedric chuckled. It felt weird in his lungs, like he'd been holding his breath for a long time. His finger traced along the envelopes edge. Harry standing in his red jumper in the threshold of his hospital room flashed in front of his eyes when he blinked.

He retired to his room, sat at his desk, and stared at the envelope for a long time. The toe of his slipper tapped against the box of unopened letters.

This was the boy who saved his life.

Cedric slipped his nail underneath the envelope flap.

This was the boy who took his magic away.

Cedric hesitated.

Was that what he was to become? A bitter young man who only saw the glass as half empty? That was not how his parents raised him. It would be an insult to them. An insult to himself.

Cedric flattened a hand over his chest and focused on his heartbeat for a few moments. He was alive. He was alive because of Harry Potter.

He ripped the envelope open and smoothed the letter on the desk. He took a long, deep breath.

_Cedric,_

_I promised I would write but I'm still not sure what to say. Summers are always the worst time of year for me. Hogwarts is my home. I hate being away from it. But it is sort of nice to go back to someplace where no one knows me and no one reads the Prophet. I'm used to the stuff they say about me but I wish they would leave you and Dumbledore out of it._

_Nothing very exciting happening on Privet Drive. My cousin Dudley fell off his bike last week. All he got was a scrape but he's wearing a sling and acting like it's broken. Which pretty much sums up Dudley as a person._

_It's easy to pretend that nothing bad is happening when you're in the Muggle world. Everything is so quiet. You'd think the worst thing that could possibly happen is my aunt Petunia not receiving an invitation to the next door neighbor's brunch. Petunia doesn't even like her._

_I had to ask Ron for your address, I hope you don't mind. He sends his regards. Hermione, too. We made a toast for you at the end of the year feast. Cho asked about you after my visit. She was worried because she hasn't heard anything back from you. I told her you just needed some time._

_Are your parents getting on alright?_

_I hope you're doing well. I'm sure that you aren't, though. People always find that frustrating but I understand. It's okay._

_Do me a favor and don't read the Prophet. Just put it in the bin where it belongs._

_Get well soon, Cedric._

_Sincerely,_

_Harry Potter_

Cedric read it again, then a third time, then folded the letter and sat back. His chest felt tight.

Underneath his desk was a box full of people who would never begin to understand him like Harry could. It probably should have felt isolating. But just like that day when Harry visited him in hospital, Cedric felt relief for the first time in too long, like he'd been submerged in a tank of cold water and was finally allowed a breath of air.

When he could breathe again, he pulled out a quill and ink and a blank piece of parchment.

_Dear Harry,_

_I have to tell you something._

* * *

 

The Diggorys visited the Ottery St. Catchpole Cemetery three times a year: on Charlotte's birthday, the day she passed, and Christmas. Sometimes his parents went more often but Cedric never particularly looked forward to it - which he felt guilty about for a number of reasons, but the truth remained the same. He had never in his life visited Charlotte on his own.

It was unusually warm for Devon so Cedric opted to go without a jacket when he left the house. His parents were getting used to him taking long walks alone and didn't bother him about his destination as he left, only that he be back by dinner. There was less worry about a reporter showing up and spying on him; the Lovegood's Disguising spell spread word that the Diggorys were no longer in the area. They'd had several weeks of peace.

If he was being perfectly honest, he'd had no conscious plans to visit Charlotte on his way out the door. He usually stuck to the wood behind his house because it was familiar, the paths forged under the feet of him and his father, and his father's father before him. The trees provided quiet, private shade, and he was surrounded by living things, by green plant life and insects and birds. The dead could not bother him there.

But he took to the road this time for no discernible reason, only that it felt like the thing to do. The cemetery was in the opposite direction of the woods due south, along several back roads deep into the St. Catchpole countryside, a few miles from the house. Walking kept his body busy and his mind blank, separated him from his childhood home that suddenly felt too small and too crowded, and away from Charlotte's bedroom door, which had yet to stop whispering things to him he knew he shouldn't be able to hear.

Cedric was quite convinced he was going mad and it was not settling with him very well.

After an hour with his back to the sun, Cedric looked up and saw the a spray of tombstones crawling over the approaching hill, spotted with full green trees, and he stopped, hands deep in his pockets, and considered turning back. An old blue car rumbled past him with a little redheaded child in the backseat plastered against the window, staring at him. For a moment Cedric thought it might be the Weasleys until he remembered that even their youngest was not a child anymore and that blue car of theirs had gone missing a while back. Another wild Harry Potter story for the books.

Cedric smiled to himself but the anxiety twisting his stomach melted it off. Trying to ignore it, Cedric pressed on toward the cemetery, if just to have a destination, an end to something since his thoughts went nowhere.

The past several weeks had been much like the ones before - monotonous, empty, and frequent nightmares of Voldemort flickering in the shadows of his bedroom - with one stark difference; a point of light in the darkness, like a newly emerging star.

His letters with Harry.

They exchanged letters nearly every other day, so much so that Harry's owl - he knew her as Hedwig now, and she had quite taken to him - came straight to his bedroom window instead of the main one in the kitchen. She was even warming up to the Diggorys' owl, an aging Tawny named Brandy, and the two would fly circles around each other in Cedric's backyard. It seemed almost like dancing. He managed to take a picture of it once, catching them just as they spiraled tightly toward the ground, and he sent it to Harry. He had loved it.

After avoiding writing to anyone for such a long time, Cedric thought it would be difficult to do - but writing to Harry proved to be as easy as anything, possibly the easiest thing he'd done in weeks. It was stream of consciousness. It was nearly journaling. Sometimes his letters would scale four or five pages, and he'd feel embarrassed to send it, but then Harry would match him, surpass him. At a glance, neither of them had much to say as far as life events; Harry was isolated in the Dursley home and Cedric was trapped in St. Catchpole.

But there was so much to say to Harry. So many things that had festered inside of him for the better part of two months that came rushing out like water from a broken dam. He thought he might drown Harry in all of it, at first.

Harry always wrote back. Harry had something broken inside of him, too.

_Harry, I'm glad you saved me, but sometimes I'm not glad I'm alive._

_Cedric, sometimes I wish I could say the same thing to my mom._

Cedric turned into the cemetery. He didn't have to look where he was going to find the Diggory plot, having been there so many times, so his eyes stayed low, reading the names on the stones as he passed.

Edwin and Judith Mayberry. George Fitzgibbon. Melody Hatter. Most of them old witches and wizards long dead before he was even born. Their stones were rain washed and worn, some with names too weathered to read. The farther he walked, the more modern the headstones became, more legible, more glossy.

Pandora Lovegood's was white marble lined in silver, her name written in blue script. Cedric paused in front of it, hands deep in his denim pockets, and he glanced around for a moment to make sure he was surrounded only by dirt and bones. He faced the stone again.

"Your daughter is kind," he said softly. "Just like you."

If only a Daily Prophet reporter could see him now, he thought, talking to the dead. That'd be the headline of the summer.

He knew, somehow, that Pandora heard him. That there was a whole audience listening, in fact.

Cedric did not know what was happening to him. Ghosts had always been a part of his life; he'd met one for the first time when he was just a child at the St. Catchpole library. She was a grumpy old woman in life and continued that legacy in death, still patrolling the library shelves, still shushing loud guests from the shadows, still reading.

There were many ghosts at Hogwarts. He had even considered the Fat Friar, the resident Hufflepuff ghost, a friend of his. Talking with the dead was an average, sometimes everyday occurrence for Magical folk. Everyone dies, but some give death a raincheck.

Others were too young to know any better. Some were too old and too tired to exist any more than they already had. Some were taken so violently, so suddenly, that there was no choice.

He honestly wasn't sure on the details. There was no Ghost 101 at Hogwarts. And as far as he knew, other than the kinds of ghosts who stuck around for one reason or another, there was no way to speak to the dead.

But Harry did that night in the cemetery at the final task of the Tournament. He spoke to Cedric as a ghost. He spoke to his parents. That was already impossible enough.

And then he pulled Cedric's body back through the portkey and brought him back to life.

What was Harry Potter made of?

Cedric crossed his arms and read Pandora Lovegood's headstone and wondered what her research would have done for the world if she hadn't died.

He wondered what he would give the world since he had lived.

Did he have anything to offer now, without magic?

Did he even have anything before when he still had it?

_Harry, do you think Voldemort will come after me and my parents?_

_Cedric, he came after mine._

He left Pandora to find his sister. The Diggory plot was tucked into the east corner of the cemetery. The stone was modest grey granite bearing the Diggory name in bold capital letters. Flush to the ground immediately in front were a series of smaller stones, each printed with the names and dates of those buried beneath: several ancestors he had never known, his paternal grandparents and his sister. Cedric's grandfather died when Amos was young, and Cedric had only a few more memories of his grandmother than he did Charlotte; she died the winter following Charlotte's death. He recalled feeling less sad and more comforted when his grandmother passed, knowing that she would be resting alongside Charlotte, whom she had loved fiercely.

Eleanor had said, once, that Charlotte's death had robbed his grandmother of her remaining years. It broke her heart.

Cedric crossed his legs and lowered himself to the ground. His empty hands flexed in his lap. Usually, there were flowers for each of them. It felt wrong coming with nothing.

"I'm sorry," he said, to no one, to everyone, to his grandparents and his sister. His eyes fluttered closed and he felt it, in his chest, under his heart, that it was okay, that they didn't mind.

The wind carried the sound of his sister's laugh.

How? Why?

Cedric flattened his palms to his chest. He was solid. Alive. Real. Wasn't he?

_Cedric, do you think about the cemetery a lot?_

_Harry, I feel like I never left it._

Cedric opened his eyes. He gasped and bit the ankle of his shoe into the dirt, kicking himself away from the Diggory plot. He covered his face with his hands.

"No, no, no!" he cried, shoulders hunched, and willed what he saw to disappear.

There was not a field of spirits watching him. He could not hear them. He could not _see_ them.

Hands shaking, Cedric's fingers split apart. He read the Diggory name through his sister's transparent face.

_Harry, I think the dead are trying to talk to me._

_Cedric, what do they say?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A note from the author.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've abandoned many stories in the past. I didn't want this to be one of them. I put a lot of thought into this story, took a lot of notes, was really prepared to buckle down and stick to it and prove to myself that I could.
> 
> But something happened. And I convinced myself that I'd still try to finish the story but every time I sit down to try I just. I can't do it. And to everyone who took the time to read this and leave such lovely reviews (seriously, some of them are probably the nicest I've ever received) I feel like I owe you all at least an explanation as to why this story is going on an indefinite hiatus, if not being abandoned altogether.
> 
> In the last week of June, my little brother passed away. Typing that sentence is a very surreal experience to me, even now, two months after the fact. I'm not willing to go into any more detail than that here - if you follow me on tumblr, you might have seen me talk about it a bit more. 
> 
> This story, which I had hoped would grow to become something really beautiful, is just. It's too much for me, right now. The theme of resurrection, of coming back from the dead ... it has plagued me every single day since my brother died. How much I wish I could reverse what happened to my brother just like I tried to do for Cedric. 
> 
> And the fact that I wrote Cedric as having a dead sibling? The irony is not lost on me. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read what I wrote so far. I'm hesitant to take it down on the off chance that I might come back to it some day ... when and if that day comes, I hope it's in a way of healing. 
> 
> I wish you all the best. Take care of yourselves.

I didn't know any other way of letting everyone know what was going on, so this is the best I can do right now.


End file.
